Today, my teenage son gave me the completed manuscript of the novel he's been working on for 4 years. Surprised and excited that he showed so much dedication to something, I volunteered to read it. I'm only on page 16 and it's absolute drivel, with grammar that makes my eyes bleed. Only 281 pages to go. FML
Collection
Fall
Dead leaves, the first cold of the season and an umbrella flipped inside out: fall, the season of grace.
Today, I finally asked some friends to read the beginning of a novel that I'd been slaving away at. One of them said it was the literary equivalent of aquarium gravel. Another asked if I'd been sniffing boot polish while writing it. FML
Today, I'm grading final projects for a junior level college class. A student finally turned in their work, after months of encouragement and coaxing. Half of it was plain wrong, the rest had so many spelling and grammatical mistakes, it appeared to be written by a drunk autocorrect program. FML
Today, my boss asked me to read through a document. I gave my feedback, saying it seemed like it had been written by an 8-year-old. Turns out it was in fact written by him. FML
Today, my 18-year-old son got his first tattoo. I would have loved it, if it wasn't a text on his hand with a glaring spelling mistake in it. FML
Today, I submitted my 5000 word assignment. When I got home, my mother asked if I'd checked it through one more time like she always warned me to do. I hadn't, therefore hadn't noticed the paragraph on page 11 that she'd written, telling me to pay attention to the small details. FML
Today, I had my teacher look over my essay before turning it in. He said it was extremely well-written, so I handed it in. When I got it back, the feedback he left said it was one of the worst essays he'd ever read. FML
Today, I uploaded the first chapter of my best writing yet to a popular writing website. After ten minutes, I was thrilled to already see one review and five comments. Each comment was telling me to immediately delete the story because of how horrible it was. The rating was half a star. FML
Today, I had to proof-read a terrible paper containing a bunch of mistakes. It took me 4 hours and I didn't eat dinner until I was done. His response when he got it back was, "What the fuck did you do to my paper?! You bitch!" FML
Today, I finally got a phone call from a publisher saying they would publish the book I'd written. I'd gotten loads of rejection letters, so I was so excited. Until I realized it was my dad, feeling sorry for me. FML
Today, I finally finished my 500 page manuscript and so went out to buy some paper to print it off. I get back home and find out my dad has infected my computer with a virus and the only way to save it was to wipe the hard drive, which he did. That script took me a year and I have no backup. FML
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Top comments
Awes0meperson 10
You could just be honest with him and maybe help him fix it instead of torturing yourself
hamzor 5
At least he's into writing and not drugs, you should be happy!
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Comments (119)
azyjazy713 11
Plenty of room for improvement. At least he's trying and can work on his weaknesses.
belljars 22
A mothers love
itsraquelponce 3
you dont actually know if OP is the mother or the father...
Yeshua_fml 19
The fact that it's drivel is the most alarming bit. How do you put a positive spin on that?
cakefete2 31
"Son, that's some hot shit."
Wizardo 34
Point them out, he's looking for constructive criticism. Maybe even enrol him into some basic creative writing classes and give him material to read, good solid classics to start with I say 'Old Sport'.
Kergami 18
Tell him to take it somewhere to get grammatically fixed, say it in a kind, proud father type of way and I'm pretty sure you won't hurt his feelings OP!
aruden 25
Congrats on the promotion to Chief Editor
Mauskau 36
I hope he wrote it on Word, usually it's nice enough to show you if your English skills suck.
Brianna_Ray 23
And that is why we have editors before things are published! Just be honest with him when you give feedback so he can improve it :)
mybubbles2000 13
It's nice to see that he was so committed to writing.
Ocrysia 1
Wow, so your teenage son's first book isn't as good as an author who's been writing for years and you're complaining? Teach him better grammar if his grammar is bad. He is obviously motivated and you should be proud of him, and also proud of yourself for raising a kid who has such motivation rather than a kid who does nothing but play video games and smoke weed all day. I understand if it's hard to read, and you of course want to tell him it's great, and it's not, but it's his first try. I wouldn't say f my life over something like that, I'd be happy, and you should appreciate that he's aspiring to do something like this.